November 9, 2006 12:42 AM

Broken: Bank of America jailing a customer

I've heard of customer-hostile banks (and have experienced them myself), but this Bank of America story takes the cake.

Matthew Shinnick dropped by a Bank of America branch in San Francisco to make sure a check he was about to deposit wasn't fraudulent. The teller found that the check was fraudulent and told the manager, who then had Shinnick thrown in jail.

Are you getting this right? The customer who wanted to make sure he wasn't about to draw on a fraudulent check, got thrown in jail by Bank of America.

The teller contacted the business and was informed that no check had been
written to Shinnick for $2,000 or any other amount. She immediately passed the
check to the branch manager.
"I saw him talking on the phone and staring at me," Shinnick said. "A few
minutes later, four SFPD officers came into the bank. They didn't say a thing.
They just kicked my legs apart and handcuffed me behind my back."
The police report for Shinnick's arrest says he was taken into custody
"for the safety of the bank employees as well as the bank customers."

Shinnick spent several hours in jail, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, before his father posted $4,500 bail. All told Shinnick spent $14,000 to clear his record. Bank of America refused to reimburse him.

_@_v - would be real funny for someone (who's already gonna face jail time for sumthin else) to go to that bank branch and at gunpoint make them empty out all the money in the joint into a pile then make the manager douse it with gasoline and burn it to ashes...

That really sucks. One lousy mistake costs someone over 14 grand to clear up. Why won't the person file a lawsuit over this matter? Getting him arrested when he just wanted to check account balance probably borders false arrest and prosecution, defamation of character and libel.

There's more to the story than the summary lets on. He went to the bank to cash the check, but before he did, he wanted to make sure it wasn't going to bounce. When the teller indicated funds were available, he asked her to cash it. At that point, it was discovered to be fraudulent. The bank has no idea if this guy is the culprit, or a victim. All they know is that he's trying to cash a fraudulent check. The police have to be involved at that point, even if this guy is an innocent victim. The bank doesn't have a crack team of investigators that can prove him innocent before the cops get there, so the cops do the reasonable thing and arrest him. I'm not sure this could have gone down any other way. I feel sorry for the guy, though.

Uzumaki: No, that's not libel or defamation of character (calling the police is, for one thing, not making a public statement.

Further, truth is a perfect defense under US law for a charge of libel, and since the check was fraudulent, BofA has the ideal defense of "He had a fraudulent check he wanted cashed, we called the police. If the police decide he needs to be arrested for that, it's not our fault, and we make no claims about his actual guilt or innocence - that's for the court to decide.").

And depending on what the charge was, it's probably not false arrest, either. Given that there really was a bad check, it would be very difficult to show false arrest - false arrest is not simply being wrong about a crime being committed or who committed it; it's arrest without probably cause or a warrant. The bank calling and there being a fraudulent check is definitely probable cause, for purposes of a false arrest finding.

LSK: It's illegal to sentence someone to a prison term without a trial.

But when someone is arrested on criminal charges, they're jailed until they post bail or are tried. Otherwise it would be rather difficult to keep criminals in, say, murder cases, from simply fleeing. That's the entire point of bail.

OK, so we have several people offering the legal advice that, roughly speaking, "this is the way the system works". So I'd like to ask those same people: What would you do in this situation? You've received a check that you suspect is fraudulent. What do you do now?

"But when someone is arrested on criminal charges, they're jailed until they post bail or are tried. Otherwise it would be rather difficult to keep criminals in, say, murder cases, from simply fleeing. That's the entire point of bail."

That just sounds wrong? Wouldn't he be interviewed first, wouldn't they decide whether there was a case to be heard at all? Here he would've been interviewed straight away where they would've established the facts and decided to either let him go, let him go and investigate it more, or charge him and he would most likely be let out till he was due to appear in court (if it was decided by the authorities that a conviction was at all feasible) - after all he *isn't* a murderer - his story definately would've been checked before a trial would even be considered. I don't know how it works in america however, but when the government locks people up indefinately in a camp in a foreign country, denied the right to know what they're charged with, denied the right to present their case and even denied a trial all in the name of supposed security - the fact that he was locked up and forced to pay bail or stay till a court hearing on only a 'suspicion' of fraud doesn't surprise me much. oh well.

You'd think there would be a more appropriate measure to take when someone tries depositing a fraudulent check--the person could be the victim OR the culprit, so simply arresting them seems like an overreaction when it's pretty 50/50.

As for suing the banks--that simply isn't possible. All attempts to sue banks will ultimately fail, unfortunately, and most lawyers won't take cases against banks. It's kind of scary, actually--they can be as careless with your money as they like and there won't be any repercussions. :\

Aren't there more important things in the world to be pissed off about besides some dude who tried to cash a bad check and got arrested? Seriously, what is the bank supposed to do if someone tries to redeem a check that, when researched, reveals is fraudulent? 99.99% of the time, that person has stolen and forged that bank's checks and is in the process of stealing money from a customer. Happens quite frequently. The cops get called. If the cops choose to be dicks about it, that's their call.

As a bank teller, I LOVE it when customers complain about rules and regulations (that they RARELY bother to read up on and that are there to protect their cash/identity, by the way) and then close their accounts. Then they go to other institutions and have to rebuild their good relationship/history. When depositing checks at this new bank, they're going to put all sorts of holds on them for months until that customer is deemed trustworthy. It's hard to feel bad for them.